The climate of awareness created by mindfulness is as much about ourselves, as it is about the living and inanimate beings external to us. It allows us to get to know ourselves better, and to establish a relationship that is more happy and at peace with ourselves. This is also the antidote for the otherisation and discrimination that we unwittingly and inadvertently have been practicing. It makes one more calm, reposeful, and productive. In this month’s Akbank Sanat Cognita Mindfulness workshop we will be working on bringing awareness to ourselves, to our environments and to our everyday life.
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Prof. Taner Damcı was born in Zonguldak in 1964, and completed his secondary education at TED Zonguldak College. He graduated from Istanbul Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University in 1988, and received his post-graduate degree from the Department of Internal Medicine of Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine in 1993. In 1995 he received the “Young Investigator Award” of International Diabetes Federation and worked at the Diabetes Clinic of the University of Manchester in the UK.
He became an associate professor in 1997 and a professor in 2003. He is currently a faculty member of Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes, and the chairman of the Turkish Obesity Foundation. He is also a member of the Turkish Diabetes Association, the Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism of Turkey, the Diabetes Obesity Nutrition Society, the American Diabetes Association, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), and the Mediterranean Group for the Study of Diabetes (MGSD).
Prof. Taner Damcı ran ultra-marathons in various parts of the world, including deserts. These include races held in the Sahara, Atacama, and Gobi Deserts and the Antarctica. He is the founder and race director of the first international ultra-marathon in Turkey, “Lycian Way Ultra Marathon”, and another international ultra-marathon “RunFire Cappadocia”.
His interest in mindfulness began in 2004, and he participated in various educational programs on the subject in the USA. Since 2013, as a founding director, he has been working with COGNITA, which is a program that utilises “mindfulness”, to empower people who want to lead a healthy life to permanently change their way of life. The programme also has a “COGNITA business” module conceived to increase efficiency and success at work.
Number of participants: 60 people